Paul's Tech Talk

How companies use Big Data and Analytics

PaulJune 3, 2021

Big data by Nick Youngson
CC BY-SA 3.0
Pix4free

What is Big Data?

The term “big data” refers to data that is so large, fast or complex that it’s difficult or impossible to process using traditional methods. The act of accessing and storing large amounts of information for analytics has been around a long time.— Sas.com (https://www.sas.com/en_us/insights/big-data/what-is-big-data.html)

Even that information is a little more harder to understand than we think. Big data is the use of servers with massive hard drive space and massive cpu power to use to analyze and look for patterns or maybe it is even simpler it is a bitcoin rig that is trying to find the hash to make a profit out of. Either way it requires a big amount of data and processing power to find the right hash to unlock bitcoins. This is what big data is, it has to analyze the hash and find the possible algorithms to for he bitcoin and make money for the user. It’s really a long process but the idea is simple it requires a lot of data and sending and receive of data to verify if the bitcoin is unlocked or not and each time it uses even more data to check it hashes as it tries to work out the formula for the bitcoin. This is what big data is about in a fashion.

Data Analytics

When we talk about analytics it can seem strange to say or even think that a company will use it to make a profit. It however is the thing in today’s market because most of the time, companies are trying to figure out what the user is wanting and leveraging what they want with making money. So what’s Analytics and why should I need to know about it?

Analytics is simply the process of looking for patterns in users and data to find common paths and understanding why those paths are being used.

Let’s face it, Companies want that information because they can figure out how to advertise to you or even bring more people to a landing page to convert into you buying their products or services. If they know 20 year olds like a certain vehicle or likes a movie, they will advertise to these groups of people and make sure their products are seen more widely to them so they can make a profit from these 20 year olds who didn’t know they were being used to make money from.

Websites

Most websites now are getting as much data as they can to find those common paths to help increase their profit and make money off of the web. It is always going to be that way, after all advertising is a really good commodity for those who can harness the data and leverage advertisements to people who visit their site. I say that with some understanding of this because I do this from time to time on my site and it isn’t any harder than what most think. I am constantly looking at what people are doing or where people are going on my site. This way I can get the advertisers to advertise for me and bring me some money to help support my website and help support my data needs for the site. I am hopeful that it will bring even more people to my site and bring them into my world and want to be loyal readers but in reality I also know when I have loyal readers they are more likely to support me and keep my site running in many ways. This is the nature of analytics and that is why it is so widely used. After Facebook does this and they know you are know it in one way or another. In truthfulness we really don’t have any more privacy when we are on the web because everyone is going to use that data for one purpose or another.

How LDR will change with this Pandemic

PaulJune 1, 2021

It’s Been over a year Now!

The Pandemic has hit every nation and every country hard the last months. We’ve seen a new variant to the covid19 and we even seen several companies develop a covid19 vaccine. It’s been over a year for me personally, it will most likely be 2 years if the Philippines doesn’t open up this fall or winter. I am in a LDR and I still don’t know what to expect from this government. Granted I still have to worry about my own government, but it is nothing compared to what I have been seeing from the Philippine government as of late. I guess this will be a little bit of a rant myself. I really wish everyone would get there act together and figure out a way for Fiances,GF, or BF to be able to see their loved ones.

Philippines open up already

I suspect that it will eventually open up but it been way to long and way to slow to do what is needed to open up. I know I am not living in the country or anything like that but I do think I have a right to complain because I have been patiently waiting to see my Fiance for well over a year and half. There is another petition going around to allow unmarried couples to get into the Philippines to see their loved ones. I am not against them being cautious or take precautions, in fact they make foreign nationals do a lot of stuff to verify we do not have Covid19. Let’s just be a little reasonable that’s all I am asking. We should try to make it where we can have enough time to be with our loved ones. Some Filipinos can really can get out of country due to family obligations or even because they can’t stop working because there is no way they can take time off. So I get that and I support them for doing the right thing.

It’s bound to open up sooner or later

I still think the Philippines will open up later this year maybe November or December. Although this is all speculation on my part and maybe I’ll be totally wrong. I do see things heading that way and I’ll keep preaching this until it either happens or it doesn’t happen. I know most of you have your own theories or maybe even might even see that it might be this year. I am hopeful just like everyone else but it has to open up with economy being like it is will need to open for there people to survive.

Tickets

I suspect that tickets will start to get more expensive as more countries open up. I even suspect that when the Philippines open up the air fare will start to go up. So I will be constantly looking to find those cheap tickets anywhere and everywhere I can think of. Even then I will probably be paying for the time these airlines are trying to make up for the lost revenue they had before this pandemic even started. I am sure we will see a steady spike of prices in all international travel as the air fare will be increased. Some other ways to save money is quite simply knowing when to buy and how to plan your trips. Even then it will still probably be higher than you used to get them, I can pretty much see that happening.

Finally

When each country starts to open up, you can bet there will be a rush of people to get into the country as quick as they can so they prices for tickets will be increased also. Higher demand will ultimately increase the price of the tickets on planes. So once you know, you really shouldn’t wait to find the best tickets but rather buy the cheapest one as quickly as possible or else you might be paying 3 times as much when you finally do decide to buy those plane tickets.

Why Having a rolling updates for Windows 10 is a Good Idea!

PaulMay 30, 2021

Those unexpected times

So you need your Windows 10 for something important from maybe a church service, or you have an important meeting on zoom for Tuesday. You have something important going on and Windows brings up this notification that you should reboot your system for an Windows 10 update. You can tell it to schedule the update later that day or even during the night with no problems but what if you have to reboot your system? There’s the problem, you do have the option to restart without updating but most people don’t know that option. It’s an easy fix. Go into command Mode by typing Cmd into the search bar.

cmd prompt

and then type:

shutdown -s -t 0

Once it shutdowns you just reboot your system and you are back to where you left off. It however isn’t always that simple with people who seem to forget that little trick from time to time.

Rolling Updates

What if You don’t have time to do this little trick or you forget. Well you know what happens, you wait for the update to take place. It can take anywhere from a few seconds to a few minutes depending on how big the update is. I’ve seen it take like 10 mins on some systems. It can take some time to update Windows 10 because you get some massive updates sometimes when it comes to updates. You get new Revisions and you get new patches every 2nd Tuesday of the month. What if you need the updates to update on a certain day. There is a way to do it. Depending on which day you need to do the updates, you can make Windows 10 pause the updates up to 35 days and that can be a very useful way to prevent unexpected updates when you need Windows 10 to just be working. You can do this by going into windows update settings

WIndows update settings

Once you click Windows Update Settings and go to the menu. You’ll want to hit the advanced options and then look for pause updates. Then you can select a date up to 35 days. This is something I tell my clients from time to time to do this because it really does help them from having those unexpected downtimes.

Once you do this, write down the date you selected and put it somewhere next your computer. I like to use Google Calendar or some calendar app to remind a few days before that date and then I update Windows 10 at my convenience not the other way around. You find a day that is convenient for you and you update windows before the 35 days or you just let it do it’s thing and you have two updates in one most of the time. Once you update and restart your system, you go back into Windows update settings and pause the updates for another 35 days or whatever date you want to pause till. You start the process over again and you have a rolling update schedule.

Change Active Hours

Something else I tell my clients is to change the active hours you work on your system. Even though Windows 10 does a really good job, it isn’t perfect and thus you might be using the system when the system thinks it should be inactive. You can also change that on the windows update setting page. I usually turn off the active hours feature and then change the active hours and put it when I will be using the computer the most of the time.

Schedule the update

You can also schedule when Windows will do the update. In the early days you could only pause the update for 4 hours before it would restart the system without your knowledge. Now you can tell Windows when to restart the system and usually it will pick sometime while you are inactive and not doing anything. So you can select the time that is convenient for you. You can do this by just going to Windows update Settings page(See above) and hit the Schedule the Restart and then select the time of day you want the system to restart the computer. This way if you forgot that there is an update and you are busy with work, you can tell it to wait till you aren’t busy with some important work.

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The Pagefile.sys and the early years

PaulMay 28, 2021

technology, electronic device, computer hardware, computer component, electronics, motherboard, personal computer hardware, cpu, computer accessory, Free Images In PxHere

from PxHere

What is the Pagefile.sys

When Microsoft created Windows XP, it became quite apparent that Windows UI couldn’t handle all the desktop users needs. Since this was in the early 2000 when we were still working with a very limited system resources. The systems we had at the time were 16 bit or 32 bit systems. This is where it gets interesting because the maximum you can have on a 16 bit system was 64kb of ram which wasn’t much. However we started with the 32 bit systems that would allow up to 4 gigabytes of memory total. It was quite nice but it still required the system to use the file system to hold or run programs. It would become self evident that the system was so bogged down by processor speed and amount of ram that was available. All the while they were working on the Windows operating system they had to create a way to throw the unimportant programs or sometimes important programs into the background to be able to load other programs. It was really a pain and I should say this isn’t something we have to worry about now.

What does it do?

Well it basically put the program to a mini sleep and throws it onto the hard drive and keeps a record of where and what it had to know in order to start the program back up. It was a way to keep memory space used to a minimum and still be able to have a really nice experience with Windows XP. Microsoft in all it’s wisdom, decided to incorporate this little feature into the Windows vista and other operating systems. I still think it has a use in Windows 10 but I doubt it is being used like was in the early days since most people usually have enough ram to not need to put to sleep any programs in the background to run programs.

Can I delete it?

Like many other experts, I say you shouldn’t even think about it. In the early days, when it was deleted or corrupted you couldn’t even boot your system. There were even cases of BSOD(Blue Screen of Death) and thus it is never recommended to delete or modify your pagefile.sys without fully backing up your system and then maybe. There are several ways you can do it but I won’t talk about that. I however will link to them and let you decide for yourself if you should do it or not.

Techradar – https://www.techradar.com/how-to/how-to-delete-move-and-resize-pagefilesys
AskLeo – https://askleo.com/what-is-pagefile-sys-can-i-delete-it/
Microsoft – https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/client-management/introduction-page-file

Does it slow my system down?

In the early days, it would most likely slow it down but since we have so much more system resources than before we shouldn’t need to worry about. I honestly have 32 gigabytes of ram in my system and see no noticeable speed difference than when I had 16 gigabytes. Pagefile.sys shouldn’t be doing anything now but it might if you are using a really big program or game that requires massive amount of memory and if you didn’t have the memory requirements for it but still was able to run it. Then you might be using pagefile.sys to do swapping of programs and free up space for that game or big program that you are trying to run.

Other than when you put your Windows system to sleep, it is what is used to throw everything you have loaded up in your laptop or desktop on to the HDD to save for quick retrieval of the programs to start the laptop or desktop where you left off. This is the only place that I know of that it is currently still be used but I am sure it is still be used on old systems.

In the long run, the pagefile.sys is still used today and probably for a while. It’s uses can be small at times but it was designed to help you with your computer memory and thus should not be tampered with unless you know what you are doing.

How College has changed me in many ways

PaulMay 26, 2021

Photo by mohamed_hassan from PxHere

Before College

When I am writing this, I’m really thinking about how this has changed me. My blog has been really quite the last few years due to my overwhelming time for working all this over time at my previous job. When the pandemic hit last year early 2020, the company, I was working at at the time had to make some really hard decisions and they decide to shut down our plant that I’ve been working at for several years. So we started the process of shutting down the plant and they started the process of laying people off and putting 300 workers off to find better and greater things. I say that with a little trepidation because they really didn’t care too much what we did after we got laid off or what our plans were. They just shut the door and said good luck. I hold no grudge with the company because they provided me with a stable income and a stable job even the benefits were a lot better than I was used to. While the process was difficult for me and others because we would have to find a new job or go to a new location, I find it was also a rewarding aspect of getting laid off. I found that I could go back to school for a trade or skill and I took the opportunity to get my Information Technology Support certifications that I’ve always wanted.

To Present Day

If you haven’t been paying attention the last few weeks, I’ve been trying to keep posting stuff to my blog to talk about subjects that I thought were interesting. It was required of us to talk about these topics and thought I would be nice to share my thoughts to the community at large. I don’t expect everyone to understand the concept but I do think it’s something that I thought would bring even more people to understand me and my thoughts in the big world of college education. We were required to write about certain subjects and I just wanted to bring you guys along for the ride. So when we got the subject over with I would throw the writings that I did on the blog to see what people thought or what type of response I got from it. So far it’s not been extremely bad or good, I’ve seen people coming more to my blog on a regular basis but I’m hopeful that more people will drop by and see what I might be posting in the future.

Future Plans

The future is bright for me, I intend to continue the process of writing posts. If I see a discussion that I like and think others will be enlightened, I will most likely publish it on my website. I’m just at odds to what my professors will say or do if they think I am plagiarizing my own work. I doubt they can do anything more than smile because I am using my own work and sharing it with the world. It also helps prevent others from using my work for their own devious needs in the future. I started scheduling more blog post in the coming weeks and I’ll sit down later on this week or next and write even more post to keep this momentum up. I’m hopeful that more people will come to my site for insightful thoughts and knuckets from me. So you see college has helped me to see that I’m a better writer than I thought. I never thought my blog was anything special. I just like to write and it was something that I wanted to try. I’ve got some good responses from classmates about my work and that is why I published them here.

College and Me

Finally, I will talk about how it has changed me. You might not know much about me but you know that I love to write and love to discuss what’s on my mind and that can be a great enjoyment of mine. I think the biggest thing that has happened to me is that I have a better understanding on how well I write and what people think about my writing abilities. All the teachers are really impressed and surprised by what I write about how how well I discuss subjects. The one thing I can say to anyone who’s thinking about college, do something that brings you joy. You can’t lose when it comes to grades and your life will better for it.

Do you like what you’ve read so far? Why not comment and tell me what you liked or hated about my blog posts. I’d love to hear from my current readers and to see my blog posts being shared around the world.